


The Oldest Hath Borne Most

by Myrtle



Series: Cause I Was Born Lonely [2]
Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
Genre: Aging, Background Sharon Tate/Jay Sebring, Cancer, Caretaking, Common Law Husbands, Death, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Lonely road trip, M/M, Post-Canon, Protective!Cliff, Rick & Cliff & Sharon & Jay Friendship, Survivor Guilt, Ten Years Later, but i let my love of caretaking get the better of me oops, hurt/comfort I guess, i can't believe i titled this with a shakespeare quote, light ptsd, not as depressing as the tags make it sound I hope lol, this started as a oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23062540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myrtle/pseuds/Myrtle
Summary: Besides, how could he possibly let himself react, when he’s got Rick in his arms, about to fall apart if Cliff doesn’t hold him together? How could he not be what he always is, when Rick is right here, needing him like this?Life catches up to Rick. Cliff keeps moving.
Relationships: Cliff Booth/Rick Dalton
Series: Cause I Was Born Lonely [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1657399
Comments: 32
Kudos: 74





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I guess someone had to write the "Rick smokes himself to an early grave" fic, right? 
> 
> This is a loose sequel to _Man's Best Friend,_ though it should also work on its own. Title is from _King Lear,_ because I am ridiculous. (It will be somewhat justified....)
> 
> Additional CW for this chapter: animal death

In six months, everything changes. And then for ten years, nothing much does.

That’s not really true, of course, plenty changes — hell, sometimes it feels like the seventies are nothing _but_ change, one big unraveling — but Cliff and Rick, they don’t change. Or maybe that’s not true either, maybe they’re just damned good at pretending they’re not changing, pretending they can stay in their cocoon on Cielo Drive forever. All wrapped up in each other, ignoring how nature takes its course, despite the signs. 

Because the signs, they’re there, from the moment that knife goes in to Cliff’s hip.

It’s far from the worst Cliff’s been hurt, so when Rick clutches his arm in the hospital, smiling tearfully, and says, _Don’t worry, buddy. You’ll be good as new in no time,_ Cliff just nods and thinks, _Sure, why not?_ Never mind that it seems like Rick’s trying to convince himself more than anything else, that’s nothing new.

He’s out of the hospital in two days, ditching the cane a few weeks later, right on schedule. But while Cliff would expect the injury to keep fading over the next few months, it seems to settle in, take up permanent residence. Six months later — when Francesca’s long gone and the break-in ought to be firmly in the rearview mirror — he’s still dragging his right leg behind him a little, still waiting for the ache to subside each morning before he gets up, still instinctively reaching for something to support himself as he sits or stands.

That in itself isn’t such a big deal: he gets around just fine, and pain is the last thing in the world that would bother him, and he doesn’t mind if he never stunts again, what with the…new arrangement with Rick. (The arrangement, that is, where Cliff quietly sells his trailer and Rick quietly stops paying him, and without saying a word about it he slips right in to the space Francesca left. That arrangement.)

But still, he’s always just let injuries roll off his back, isn’t used to one becoming a permanent part of him like this. He has to admit that, well, it does bother him a little. Not the injury itself, but the fact that if he’s not recovering like he used to, it can only mean one thing:

He’s getting old.

He says this to Rick one night, when Rick frets that he’s not healing faster for the millionth time. Rick looks like he’s been punched in the gut. “Don’t—don’t you go dyin’ on me, old man,” he says, worrying the sheets between his hands. He’s aiming for humor, but it’s obvious there’s real terror behind it.

Cliff sees no reason to worry about dying, so he chuckles, pulls Rick closer, and kisses him ‘til the crease is gone from between his eyes. “Don’t worry, partner,” he says. “I ain’t going nowhere anytime soon.” Which is a thing that’s easy enough to say when you have no idea whether it’s true.

If Cliff’s hip was the first sign, Brandy is the second. When she starts to break down in 1976, she’s old enough that Cliff can’t be surprised, but still, he hates to see her like that: barely keeping food down, muscle melting off her, lethargic all the time, that spark of intelligence gone from her eyes. When the vet says there’s not much they can do for her, he knows it’s time.

“Why don’t you have the vet do it? You know they do that, right?” Rick says.

Cliff shakes his head. “Ain’t my way. If you decide it’s time to end a creature’s life, you ought to be willing to do it yourself, that’s how I was taught. I’ve done that for all my dogs, and I’ll do it for Brandy.”

So one morning, he gives Brandy a serving of real hamburger meat, then drives her out to an open stretch of field, not wanting to scare the neighbors. She sniffs around a little and lies down without even needing to be told, looking up at him. He sits next to her, leans over so she can lick his face, rubs her belly for a long time. He says, “You saved us, you know that? Thanks, darling. You’re the best I ever had,” as her tail thumps on the ground. Then, keeping her head still, he takes his gun and holds it to the right spot.

She’s not scared — never could be scared of him.

It’s quick and painless.

He buries her there, and drives home with the shot ringing in his ears. Later, Rick kisses him gently and holds him all through the night.

So, two signs of—change. Aging. Mortality. And that’s not even getting to Rick.


	2. Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes at the end. 
> 
> CW for this chapter: fairly detailed descriptions of illness (lung cancer).

Among the near-infinite facts about Rick that Cliff keeps filed away in his mind, there are the following:

1) Rick has a cough, sometimes a pretty bad one.

2) Rick should probably stop smoking so much.

For years, these sit firmly in the _Ignore Uneasily_ folder. Starting around ’78, when the coughing fits start coming more frequently and Rick is getting out of breath from a simple chase scene, they move to the _Maybe Actually Do Something About This_ folder.

In 1980, the first time Rick pulls a tissue away from his mouth and there’s red in it, they move to the _Urgent_ folder.

They’re filming _Escape from Alcatraz_ at the time, and Rick’s cough echoes spookily through the cold, damp fortress. (There was a time when Cliff would have been left behind to house-sit while Rick was filming on location, but now that Rick is a real movie actor — if not quite a star — he can justify bringing along his own driver (gofer, shrink, lover). So Cliff gets to come to San Francisco and hang around on set: reading, smoking, occasionally coaching the greener stunt guys, at the ready for when Rick starts to lose his shit and _Would somebody get Booth over here?_ echoes across set.) Cliff knows this is a tough shoot for Rick, between it being his first true Hollywood lead since _McCluskey_ and the pressure of filling Clint Eastwood’s shoes, so he does him the kindness of pretending to ignore that first bloody tissue.

But the next time it happens, when they don’t have to be on set that day and are in the privacy of their hotel room (officially Rick’s room, but Cliff’s has been used for nothing but storage; Cliff goes in there only to turn the sheets down each night for the maids’ benefit), he pauses in getting dressed, looks at Rick sitting on the bed in his boxers and at the red-against-white in his hands. “Alright, buddy. Don’t you think it’s time you saw a doctor?”

Rick laughs nervously, balling up the tissue. “Oh, come on. When’s the last time you went to the doctor, huh?”

That’s true enough, and it doesn’t seem fair to point out that Cliff’s not the one who sounds like he’s dying, so he says, “Hey, I ain’t the face of this operation.” 

Rick looks at Cliff’s bare chest (still in stunt-ready shape, though he’s long retired from that), attempts a leer. “M—maybe you should be.”

And normally Cliff would be happy to take that as an invitation, but now he sits next to Rick, places a hand on his knee, trying to steady him as he says, “Rick. I’m serious. You think I don’t notice shit? Out of breath all the time, sounding like you’re about to hack up a lung. Now this.” He takes the tissue. Rick has stilled, won’t meet his eyes. “I bet this has happened before, huh? When I’m not around?”

He doesn’t deny it.

“What else? Tell me.”

Rick takes a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah, the blood, uh, maybe a month now. And — I don’t know, Cliff — it’s hard to, to breathe, sometimes. Not just out of breath, but like it—it _hurts,_ in—inside my chest.”

Cliff’s heart sinks. He takes Rick in his arms, hugs him tight, skin against skin. Then says, “Alright. It’s alright. When we get back to LA, doctor.”

Rick looks fucking terrified, but he nods.

* * *

When he does get Rick to a doctor, things start happening very fast. It feels like the whole place takes one look at Rick and knows immediately, like it’s a neon sign flashing above his head, begging to be noticed, like Cliff was an idiot or an asshole for not doing something about it sooner. 

The X-ray happens that first day, and the biopsy not long after. And then the results are in and they sit in an office hearing words like _extensive-stage, lymph nodes, comorbid emphysema, inoperable,_ and Cliff’s no doctor but it’s painfully obvious what it all adds up to: _This is not going to be pretty._

(Yes, Cliff is there in the room with him. There’s an awkward moment, at that first appointment, when they call Rick in and Cliff stays in his chair. He figures it’s easy to justify him driving Rick to appointments and sitting in the waiting room, harder to explain going in to the office with him. But Rick turns back, the request obvious on his face, and after a moment Cliff thinks, _Fuck it. He’s not gonna make it through this alone._ After that, he accompanies Rick everywhere they’ll let him, daring someone to question it, which no one does. At least not to his face.)

That day, the day it — the cancer, that is, the fucking cancer, there’s no reason to be scared of a word, even if Rick is — the day the cancer becomes official, their walk out of the hospital is silent, thick with tension. In the parking lot, Cliff stops and looks at Rick, who’s shaking a little, looking lost. He touches Rick’s shoulder and says, “You okay, buddy?” which is a fucking stupid thing to say, but he can’t think of anything better. 

Rick looks at him and laughs wildly, bitterly. “No, I’m not—I’m n—not fucking—… _okay,”_ and then his face is buried in Cliff’s neck, sobs starting to heave up out of him. Cliff gets them into the car quickly, then lets Rick collapse against him, crying and shaking and screaming _It’s not fair, it’s not fucking FAIR,_ over and over. Cliff just holds him, one hand buried in his hair, the other rubbing his back, murmuring into his neck: _I know. I know. I know._

As for Cliff, there’s a little tendril of _something,_ panic or something like it, deep in his gut, but he keeps that squashed way down. After all, this isn’t really a surprise: he’s long figured Rick would be the source of his own undoing, and it was just a question of whether the booze or the smokes would do it first. So really, he’s as calm as ever.

(Besides, how could he possibly let himself react, when he’s got Rick in his arms, about to fall apart if Cliff doesn’t hold him together? How could he be anything but what he always is, when Rick is right here, needing him like this?)

* * *

That night, he kisses Rick slowly, softly, ghosting his hands over Rick’s body. (Cliff can see the signs of aging, of course — the way his hair is thinning and shot through with grey, the way he’s going soft around the middle — but he still thinks Rick looks as handsome as he ever did, still can’t keep his hands off him. (The little scar in the hollow at the base of his throat from the biopsy, though, that bothers him. On Cliff, it would just be one more to add to the collection, but on Rick it looks out of place, all wrong.))

Cliff figures he ought to be gentle tonight, but Rick grabs his arm and looks at him with a kind of wild desperation. “No,” he says, “Not like that. I need—please—I want—” His grip tightens on Cliff’s wrist. “ _Fuck_ me— _please_ —for _real.”_

So he does, pounding into him, hard and fast, giving it everything he has. Rick writhes under him, pulls Cliff close, digging into his back, and when he comes, he screams some more.

Later, Cliff lies awake, watching Rick breathe, slow and steady for now. He thinks, _You should probably cry now. This is probably a good time to cry._ He hardly remembers the last time he cried – he thinks it must have been some time in the war. Early on, maybe the first time he killed a man. Hazy memories of gasping, sobbing, tears on his face as he ran…but he can’t be sure. (The important things he remembers clearly: where he was, what unit, who died, how many he killed, what firearm. But how it _felt?_ Whether he _cried?_ Why hang on to shit like that?)

But since then: never, not for Billie, not for Brandy, nothing. This ought to warrant it though, he thinks, so he slips out of bed quietly and goes into the bathroom, squinting against the light. He leans against the counter and looks at himself in the mirror. Lines on his face and grey in his hair, scars thrown into sharp relief by the overhead fluorescents. He tells himself, out loud, “Rick is gonna die,” seeing how the words feel.

They feel like a fact he’s always known, that’s all.

He tries again. “Rick is gonna die. He’s gonna get sick, real sick, and it’ll hurt him. And then he’ll be gone. _Soon._ Before me— _”_

And there the words catch in his throat, and he can _feel_ it, in his chest, the _absence_ of Rick, the _leaving,_ the loss of the anchor of his whole fucking life. He closes his eyes and rocks back and forth on his heels, gripping the counter, his breath sharp and uneven and noisy.

No tears, though.

* * *

It’s almost funny, how fast Rick stops smoking after that, as if it will do any good at this point. Cliff can’t help but think, _You couldn’t have done that years ago, buddy?_

Though to be fair, it’s not like Cliff is planning to quit. He has the decency to stop smoking around Rick, of course, but he doesn’t hesitate to slip away for a cigarette when he can. If he’s honest, it feels just as good as it ever did, warm and familiar, something to hang on to.

* * *

The strange thing is how little their lives change at first. It’s the same old Hollywood grind, interviews and guest spots and parties, though they start slipping out of the parties early, before Rick is too exhausted. Cliff gets used to driving him to radiotherapy appointments, sitting in the waiting room reading out-of-date magazines, trying not to think about the fact that they’re shooting radiation at his chest and also, apparently, at his fucking _brain_ (preventative only, he’s assured, but _still_ ).

The rash from the radiation, peeling red skin on Rick’s chest and back, at least heals quickly.

They go to the _Escape from Alcatraz_ premier, and Cliff hangs out smoking with the crew (or really, _near_ the crew, because he’s not truly one of them, not anymore) and watches Rick walk the red carpet. He looks a little shaky, a little tired, a little less talkative for fear of coughing fits. But above all Rick is a pro, so if you weren’t looking for it you’d probably never guess he’s living on borrowed time. 

* * *

The thing about time, though, is it always catches up.

They’re on the couch, each nursing a drink, as they’ve been so many times, half-watching _The Jeffersons._ Cliff is quiet, listening to Rick breathe beside him (he listens for Rick’s breathing constantly now, just one more addition to the countless things-about-Rick he monitors), so he notices immediately when Rick goes silent. He looks over and Rick is too still, a pained look on his face, trying to get air. “Cliff…help, I—I can’t breathe…” he says, voice small and hoarse.

And Cliff is beside him in a second, hand on his back. “It’s okay, they told you about this, remember? Lean over, come on.” He puts gentle pressure on Rick’s back and he tilts forward, elbows on his knees. “Good, now _breathe.”_

But Rick is trembling, shaking his head. “I _can’t.”_

Cliff isn’t sure how much of this is just Rick panicking, but he says, “Alright, lie down,” and he gets on the floor in front of the couch, hip be damned, and helps Rick stretch out. He places a hand on Rick’s stomach and says, “Breathe from here. Try to move my hand.” And finally Rick takes a gasping, shaky breath. Cliff stays there, one hand rising and falling with Rick’s breath and the other buried in his hair, until he steadies, as George berates Weezy in the background.

Rick looks up at him, and he looks so scared, so sad, and Cliff is suddenly filled with rage. He wants to take his gun, the fucking flamethrower, whatever, and go out and keep every bad thing far away from Rick, fucking _destroy_ anything that could make him look like that ever again. Which, he can’t, so he settles for kissing Rick hard on the lips and murmuring _It’s okay, it’s okay_ into his skin, over and over, even though it really isn’t.

* * *

Things take a turn when Rick starts complaining about his leg hurting all the time, then his arm, which Cliff thinks is strange. It turns out the cancer has spread to his bones, and Cliff isn’t usually squeamish but that horrifies him, the idea of something inside Rick’s _bones,_ eating away.

They give him a prescription for painkillers and tell him to start thinking about palliative care.

Rick decides it’s time to put out a press release. “It’s always best to get out ahead of these things,” his agent says, as if the issue here is what effect dying will have on Rick’s fucking career. 

Which, as it turns out, might be finally coming together, now of all times. _Alcatraz_ is a hit, even if some of the critics question whether Rick is really up to carrying the picture. (Cliff thinks reading your own reviews is a quick route to insanity, but Rick is of course obsessed with them, could quote them at you verbatim, good or bad.) He’s getting calls from producers left and right, _good_ calls, but he quietly turns them all down, until word gets out and the offers turn into sympathy calls. 

All things considered, Rick handles it pretty well. Sure, he has his share of meltdowns, but those are just par for the course with Rick; they can ride those out together, as they always have. But while Cliff would have expected the news that he’s dying to totally destroy Rick, it just…doesn’t. Hell, he even jokes about it a little (“Fifty-six is too old to die tragically young, ain’t it? Dammit, I even fucked that up.”). And Cliff will sometimes enter a room to find him sitting completely still, not restless or reaching for a drink, just looking out the window, face unreadable. At those times Cliff will stand there for a while, not saying anything, just watching and trying to figure out what this is. Rick’s always been good at ignoring difficult truths, but he doesn’t think this is that. It’s more like…hell, like acceptance, maybe. Like everything that's plagued him, the tension and dissatisfaction and fear, are draining right out of him along with his life.

* * *

If Cliff saw it in a movie, he’d think it was bad writing, overwrought irony, too goddamn poetic to be believed. But it is an absolutely true fact that Steve goddamned McQueen is dying of cancer at the same time as Rick.

The worst part is, McQueen gets there first, and with more style.

McQueen’s illness is a sensation, the tabloids eating up every lurid detail: the asbestos, the wacko doctors, the sojourn in Mexico, the coffee enemas. Compared to all that, of course Rick is only mentioned as an afterthought: _Also-ran Western star Rick Dalton was also stricken with cancer, of the boring old lung variety._

Cliff thinks that of the two, he’d rather be Rick here, would rather have the dignity of a mostly private death. But that’s not Rick’s way. “I swear, it’s like some, some sick joke,” he rants. “My whole career, there he is, one step ahead. Doing it better.” He shakes his head in disgust, though Cliff doesn’t think there’s any real malice behind it. Rick’s spent so much of the last two decades complaining about McQueen that at this point, it’s more habit than anything else.

“Look at it this way,” Cliff says from the kitchen. “At least you’ll outlive him.” It’s true—McQueen is rapidly deteriorating, according to Jay, who tends to know these sorts of things.

Rick laughs at that. “Thank fuckin’ God. Outliving McQueen, that might be the only thing I ever did right.”

Cliff walks up behind him, leans over the back of the couch, drapes his arms over Rick’s chest. “Really?” he says in Rick’s ear. “The _only_ thing?”

Rick turns his head back to give him a messy kiss.

“Well. Alright. Maybe a couple things.”

* * *

When a single, childless man is dying, there are certain practicalities that have to be worked out. One of them is the matter of inheritance.

The house, Rick’s lawyer tells him, will go to Rick’s closest living relative, which turns out to be some cousin in Missouri who is about to get very, very lucky.

“Course, I—I _could_ do whatever I want with it,” Rick says, the one time they talk about it. “But — well…”

There is a conversation they don’t have, which goes something like this:

_I could give it to you. Maybe I should. But it’s one thing for you to live here with me now, and a whole other story for me to leave you my house. And I do care what people think, even after I’m dead, I’m too scared of what they’ll say, I’m too chickenshit to do it._

_I know. I get it. I never expected anything else._

Instead, Rick looks uncomfortable and stammers out, “I—I didn’t know if you’d—”

Cliff cuts him off. “It’s okay.” He suddenly thinks of George Spahn, holed up in his old ranch long after everyone else had gone, blind and decrepit and getting fucked by a psycho. “I don’t expect I’ll be sticking around here, anyway.”

* * *

Next it’s Rick’s back that starts hurting, _really_ hurting, and sure enough, it’s spread to his spine now. It’s awful to watch: Rick seems to be in pain all the time, exhausted too, nauseous from the new stronger painkillers that don’t fucking work anyway. He spends his days shuffling from the bedroom to the couch to the deck, winded from each trip, alternating between crying jags and a strange, defeated sort of calm.

The doctors’ faces are grim these days. The radiotherapy doesn’t seem to be working, they say, and now that there’s multiple metastases things have the potential to get much worse very quickly. No one actually says, _Get your affairs in order,_ but the message is clear.

One evening they sit in their side-by-side deck chairs, watching the sunset. It could almost be any other night from the last eleven years, if Cliff ignores the way his hand aches for a cigarette. Instead, he tries to savor the way Rick’s hand trails lightly up and down his arm, the quiet affection in it; the fact that Rick, at least for the moment, is _okay,_ doesn’t need anything, and they can just _be_ together.

When the sun dips below the horizon, he drains his beer and stands. “I’m gonna grab another. You want anything?”

(He’s vaguely aware Rick shouldn’t be mixing alcohol with the various pills they’ve got him on, but he can’t bring himself to put Rick through more misery on top of everything else. Besides, he’s already got cancer, what more damage can he really do?)

Rick glances at his half-full glass. “Nah, I’m good. But do me a favor — go look in my dresser. Bottom drawer. Got something in there for you.”

Cliff does, and buried under the socks, there’s a brown paper bag, heavy. He opens it and lets out a low whistle — it’s filled with thick rolls of twenty dollar bills.

He carries it back to the deck, the beer forgotten. Rick is sipping his whiskey sour, looking somber in the half-light of dusk. “Rick. There’s gotta be a hundred thousand dollars in here. Where’d you get this?”

“Robbed a bank, what do you think?” Rick says, deadpan. Cliff laughs, and Rick does too, until he winces, puts a hand on his chest, closes his eyes for a few moments. Then he says, “Nah, I made a little withdrawal. Betty in Missouri doesn’t need _everything_.”

Cliff shakes his head. “I got these VA checks coming in now, I’ll be fine—”

“No, no,” Rick says. “Wh—what are you gonna do, sit around waiting for some piddly little VA pension every month? Take it.” He motions with his glass towards the hills below them, lighting up as darkness falls. “That way you can go, do—do whatever you want.”

Another man might be insulted to be given a bag of cash, but not Cliff. Because Rick isn’t really giving him cash. He’s giving him just what he needs: freedom.

* * *

Cliff’s a light sleeper, so Rick’s sharp gasp wakes him up immediately. He turns on the light to find Rick sitting up, cradling his upper left arm — the one the cancer’s spread to — against his chest, whimpering in pain. It’s red and swelling up. “Fuck, Cliff,” he says, tears in his eyes. “I think it—it might be broken.”

_“What?”_ Cliff is wide awake now, but he has no idea what’s going on. “Hell are you talkin’ about, you fall out of bed or something?” But that doesn’t make any sense, he would have heard that, so, what the _fuck?_

Rick shakes his head. “I don’t know, I just rolled over, but I felt it snap and now I can’t move it and, and— _fuck,_ Cliff, it fucking _hurts.”_

Cliff feels totally disoriented, as close as he ever gets to panic. This is all wrong. He shouldn’t be waking up in the middle of the night to find Rick with a broken arm for no reason, he shouldn’t put so much effort into making sure Rick’s okay and have it all be so useless, he shouldn’t be seeing Rick fall apart and not be able to fucking _fix it._

On autopilot, Cliff throws on jeans and a shirt, scoops Rick up and carries him to the car, figuring he can get to the hospital faster than any ambulance. He drives with grim concentration, right hand on Rick’s trembling knee, still feeling barely in control.

It turns out sudden fractures are common in a bone that’s deteriorating from cancer, but still, it’s a bad sign. When they take Rick away, Cliff pulls a doctor aside and asks how long Rick should expect to be in here.

The doctor gives him a sympathetic look. “I’ll be honest. The way he’s doing, I wouldn’t expect him to check out.” 

Cliff goes home to pack up a bag for Rick, then spends the rest of the day sitting around the hospital, jittery, hating that all he can do is watch the doctors and nurses fuss over Rick.

By the time Rick is all settled in, it’s nearly dark. Cliff goes home and doesn’t know what to do with himself. He paces around the empty house, turns the TV on and off, opens a beer, doesn’t drink it. He feels like a caged animal.

In the past when he felt like this, he might have gone to a shady bar and picked a fight. The thrill of landing a good punch, the unique pleasure of getting hit for real, that’s what he’s craving. Not some stunt bullshit, but the kind of thing that has the power to overwhelm you, take you out of yourself, until you’re nothing more than a body going up against another body. 

But it’s hard to find someone willing to beat up a guy with gray hair and a limp, and plus Rick wouldn’t much like him showing up with a black eye tomorrow. So instead he takes his bike out of retirement, glad he’s kept it chained up behind the shed since he sold the trailer. He rarely rides it — he likes driving the car too much — but sometimes you need that feeling of the wind raw against your skin.

Before he rides off, he pauses, considers for a moment, then goes and gets his gun out of his nightstand, sticking it in the back of his jeans. He’s not going to do anything stupid, he just—has a need for _something_ tonight, noise, violence, the feeling of holding death in your hands.

(Rick was freaked out by the gun in the nightstand at first, when Cliff moved it there as part of the slow, unacknowledged process of his stuff migrating into Rick’s room. “Well, I ain’t slept without a weapon nearby since before the war,” Cliff had told him. “And to be honest, I don’t see that changing.” Rick accepted that immediately.)

And then he’s off into the night, riding so fast he’s practically flying, revving the engine at stoplights just because he can. He heads north, into the foothills of the San Gabriels — one of the nice things about LA is you can be in the middle of nowhere in not even an hour — and pulls off the road, following a dirt path until he can’t see any evidence of civilization.

He stops the bike and gets off, standing there in the empty space. The air is hot and dense, a coyote howls in the distance, and Cliff feels just this side of sanity.

There’s enough moonlight that he can see the outline of a tree a ways off, so he aims at a branch, testing himself, and fires off a few rounds one after another, _bang-bang-bang._ He wishes the revolver was a shotgun, would relish feeling the kickback.

His aim is true, like he knew it would be. 

He pauses, breathing, feeling the weight of the gun in his hands. It’s very quiet. He imagines Rick right now, laid out in a hospital bed, doped up, helpless, and suddenly he hurls the gun away savagely. It skitters along in the dirt a few feet. He laughs. “What the fuck are you doin’ out here, man?” he says aloud. “Some old cowboy, shooting at nothing? Like you can save him with that thing. Talkin’ to yourself, cause you got nobody else to talk to, huh?” He laughs again.

He bends over, hands on his knees, and laughs some more, not that there’s anything funny. It pours out of him, the laughter, wild, desperate, uncapped, and it grows and grows until at some point he realizes he’s screaming.

He lets himself fall onto his knees into the dirt, and the impact sends a pain shooting through his hip and he screams for that too, for hurts that don’t go away, for bodies that break down and betray you, for the end of things. He screams for what he’s had and lost, for what he’s never had and never will. For what he’s done, for what he wasn’t able to do. For Rick. And for himself — himself as he is right now, not playing it cool, not holding it together, but a raw, bleeding wound.

He’s out there for a long time, under the big desert sky, no one to hear him but his bike and his gun.

Then he rides home and goes to bed, ready to get up again and do whatever Rick needs of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In real life, _Escape from Alcatraz_ came out in 1979 and starred Clint Eastwood. However there was drama with the rights between Eastwood and the director before production started, and it was the last movie they ever made together. So in this version, Eastwood quit and was replaced with Rick, and I figured that could have delayed its release to 1980. 
> 
> The McQueen stuff is all true to the best of my knowledge; it’s a pretty wild story. 
> 
> I have no medical background but I tried to do my research, so I hope the cancer stuff is fairly accurate.


	3. Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Ok, to be honest, I do feel a little weird posting a story about illness/death in the middle of an epidemic…but it’s not really the same thing at all and I started writing this ages ago, so, on with the show I guess.] 
> 
> I took some inspiration for Rick’s career from the (amazing) deleted scene of him talking with Sam Wanamaker. Historical notes at the end.
> 
> CW for this chapter: fairly detailed descriptions of illness (lung cancer)

Truth be told, Cliff fucking hates hospitals — too quiet, too many rules, nurses walking around like goddamned cops — but he’s there bright and early that first morning. Rick is pretty out of it; morphine and benzos will do that to you. (The benzos are for the alcohol withdrawal. When Cliff realizes Rick is going to have to get sober in the hospital, his stomach lurches, imagining him suffering through DTs in there. But the lack of booze turns out to hardly register, drowned out by the morphine and the fatigue and all the rest of it.)

There’s a thick plaster cast on his arm, and they’ve got him all hooked up, IV, some kind of monitors, who knows. And there’s a thin tube looped over his ears, sending oxygen into his nose. It’s stupid, but that, of all things, is what really bothers Cliff. It’s making Rick more comfortable, he knows, and he should be grateful, but it makes him look so fragile, so _weak,_ that Cliff just wants to punch something.

Rick, maybe sensing his discomfort, tries to tell him he doesn’t need to visit every day. But Cliff just laughs and says, “Man, what are you talkin’ about? ‘Course I do.”

He takes to showing up any time he pleases, visiting hours be damned, and the nurses restrain themselves to dirty looks, which Cliff is perfectly happy to ignore. One of the benefits of dying as a quasi-movie star.

Another is that you get your own private room. It’s quickly filled with cards and flowers from well-wishers — Rick’s got plenty of friends in Hollywood these days, especially after _Alcatraz —_ and Cliff gets to help decorate again (“Nah, put th—that one from Sharon over here, would you? And what is this, who fuckin’ sends fruit, who’s this from — God, Peppard, of _course.”)_.

Rick gets plenty of visitors, too. He’s careful to always tell Cliff when they’re coming, and Cliff stays away at those times. He has no problem with most of these people (and most of them don’t have a problem with him either; Rick’s peers — actors and directors — can’t be bothered with the past crimes of some stuntman), but his time with Rick now feels private, something to be guarded. He wants Rick’s vulnerability to be for his eyes alone, doesn’t want anyone else to see Rick like this, in decline — and he certainly doesn’t want to be there when they do.

Plus there’s the matter of appearances. True, they’ve been less and less careful over the years — hell, barely careful at all, at this point. They’ve lived together for more than a decade (not that they broadcast that fact, but still, people can put two and two together), hardly go anywhere alone; Cliff knows there must be rumors. And personally, he doesn’t give a shit if there are. But Rick does care, he knows, and it’d be awful hard to explain to the Hollywood elites why his washed-up old stuntman is hanging around his room all day.

Even so, they’ve got plenty of time to kill together, so Cliff lugs in a VCR and hooks it up to the TV in Rick’s room, and they dig in to as much of the Rick Dalton filmography as he can find on tape.

Much of it doesn’t hold up all that well, but still, it’s fun to watch, trading commentary and memories. The old stuff is a real trip, Rick baby-faced and charming. “Shit, I remember watching you shoot this,” he tells Rick one day, as Jake Cahill bursts through swinging doors into an unfriendly saloon.

“Yeah?” Rick looks at him shyly, hungry for validation even now. “What’d you think?”

“That I couldn’t fuckin’ take my eyes off you.” It’s true, though at the time he thought he was just watching Rick so closely in order to better double him.

On the screen, Rick raises his gun, Cliff dives out of the way of a bullet and rolls over a table, and Rick pops up, firing, with a winning smile.

Next to Cliff, Rick laughs and blushes. “Same here, buddy.”

Cliff has a soft spot for Rick’s later work too, though admittedly there are some real duds. You can see how Rick’s matured as an actor; there’s a grit to him, a gravitas, even when he’s chewing the scenery. But though he may enjoy the performances, he can’t say he always loves watching them now, given the circumstances. In fact, it gets kind of weird, watching Rick evolve and age before his eyes, especially with the evidence of how it all turns out right next to him. At times Cliff finds it downright eerie, this living history of the rise and fall of Rick Dalton.

Rick must feel the same way, because sometimes Cliff looks over in the middle of a scene to find him crying quietly. Cliff figures that’s understandable. 

* * *

“Congratulations,” Cliff says one day by way of greeting.

Rick looks at him, confused. Pale, surrounded by beeping machines, he doesn’t look like a man who should be congratulated on much of anything.

“You’ve officially outlived McQueen,” Cliff says, lowering himself into the plastic chair.

Rick blanches. “No shit?”

“Yep. Heard it on the radio this morning.”

Rick laughs. “Well, what do you know.” He laughs again, then quiets. “McQueen’s dead. Huh,” he says, almost to himself, and Cliff sobers. It occurs to him that maybe they shouldn’t be laughing at another man’s death.

“Guess it’s the end of an era,” Rick says softly.

“I guess so,” Cliff says. And it does feel like it’s the end of _something,_ 1980\. Just four days earlier, they watched a movie star get elected President, and maybe that said something about where things were headed. They’ve had plenty of time to get used to Reagan in politics, so maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising, but still: it’s one thing for the lunatics out here in California to want the host of General Electric Theater as their governor, quite another for the entire goddamn country to agree to it.

The room is quiet aside from Rick’s noisy breathing as Cliff thinks about these things, about how one day you look around and there’s an actor in the White House and Steve McQueen is dead and you don’t hardly recognize the world anymore. End of an era.

End of the Rick Dalton era too, soon.

As for the Cliff Booth era, he hasn’t figured that one out yet.

Rick must be thinking along the same lines, because he takes a shaky breath and says, “Cliff, you’ll be…I mean, are you gonna be…okay?”

Placating Rick is such an ingrained habit that Cliff’s reply is almost automatic. “’Course I will,” he says, smiling a little. “Don’t you worry about me, buddy.”

He’s expecting Rick to smile and lean back, comforted. But instead he shakes his head. “No, don’t fuckin’…don’t _do_ that,” he says, sounding almost angry.

Cliff goes still. Rick is looking at him in this rare, intense way, like he’s seeing right through all Cliff’s usual bullshit. He feels totally exposed, naked. He doesn’t much like it.

And maybe that’s evident, because Rick’s face softens a little, but his eyes don’t waver. “I’m asking for real. Gi—give me a real answer.”

Cliff has no quick reply to that. Will he be okay? He tries to come up with an honest answer. For all that he’s thought about Rick’s death, he hasn’t seriously considered what’s on the other side of it, not _really._ Hasn’t truly confronted the fact that one day soon, he will wake up and Rick Dalton will no longer exist. And that will still be true the next day, and the day after that, and on and on for as long as he sticks around on this earth.

Fuck. He wants a goddamn cigarette.

Instead he looks up at Rick, whose stare is deadly serious. “Well, I dunno,” he says slowly, honestly. “Guess I’ll have to be, won’t I?”

Rick looks at him for a moment, still with that strange serious look. “I think you will be. I do,” he says. He shakes his head, laughs a little. “You know something? Sometimes I think, I think I’m kind of glad I’m—I’m going this way. I mean, that it’s me, and not you. And that’s why. Cause I think you’ll be okay. And if it was you, and I had to, to—I mean, can you imagine?” He laughs again, though Cliff doesn’t think it’s very funny. “I’d be a, a fuckin’ goner.”

Cliff tries to imagine it. Rick without him, getting old, more and more out of place as the world changes around him. He pictures Rick trying to fix his own television. Rick losing it on set and throwing things in his trailer. Rick watching his TV appearances at home, cracking jokes to no one. Rick falling asleep alone and waking up alone.

Cliff falling asleep alone and waking up alone.

And then Rick is going, “Oh fuck, shit, _Cliff—”_ and at first he wonders why, what the hell is wrong now, until he realizes that he — Cliff, that is, not Rick — he’s _crying,_ real honest-to-god tears all over his face and he can’t really breathe and it fucking _hurts._ That’s what surprises him, he had forgotten about that, how it burns behind your eyes and how ugly it feels, painful, embarrassing —

He wonders if this is how Rick feels all the time. He hopes not, because it’s fucking awful.

He never consciously decides to lean over onto the bed, just ends up there, trying to get as close to Rick as he can. And Rick latches on to him, puts an arm around his neck, and that helps a little. He’s still babbling, “Fuck, Cliff, I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to—to upset you, don’t worry, you’ll be okay, you’ll be okay…”

Cliff, still a goddamn mess but at least able to breathe now, looks up at him. “How—how the hell do you know?”

Rick shakes his head. “’Cause you’re not like me. You’re not a—a fuckin’ mess. I mean, I, I fucking _need_ you, Cliff, you know that. But you can do shit on your own, you know? You don’t need me, not really.”

And that — the way Rick’s talking, like he thinks Cliff will just be _okay_ without him, like he doesn’t even know that Cliff’s in this just as deep as he is — that sets him off all over again, shaking, sobbing from deep inside him, ugly, raw sounds coming out of his throat. This time Rick doesn’t say anything, just tightens his arm around his shoulders, letting him cry, waiting.

Finally he looks Rick in the eye, needing him to understand this. “Rick,” he says. “Don’t fuckin’ say shit like that. Listen. You might think I’ll have it easier than you would, and that might be true. But it ain’t because I don’t need you. It ain’t because I don’t care.” Rick looks pained, but for once, he isn’t getting upset. “I am in _deep_ here, Rick. As deep as you are. Don’t you ever — _ever —_ think I’m not.”

“I know,” Rick says softly. “Of course I know,” and Cliff thinks he believes him. Rick leans over and hugs him tight. It’s an awkward angle but that’s okay because it’s so _good,_ real, grounding, and Cliff can feel himself calming down, the tears draining away, back to an even keel, just from the simple fact of Rick holding him.

After a while, Rick looks at him, a hint of mischief in his eyes. “You know,” he says seriously. “I blame McQueen for this.”

And Cliff laughs, leaning further into him as Rick’s hand traces gentle circles on his back. He realizes, _this_ is how Rick feels all the time. He thinks that’s alright.

* * *

For a while, things are actually kind of easy, better in some ways than when Rick was at home. It’s a relief, honestly, to not be responsible for all these new problems, the pain and nausea and trouble breathing. The nurses can handle that now, and Cliff can handle the…whatever you’d call it. The usual Rick shit, the shit he’s been handling for years.

The oxygen and the morphine drip help a lot; Rick can breathe okay and isn’t in pain all the time, and there are days where he’s as awake and lively as ever. Those days, Rick will pass on the gossip he hears from his visitors, or complain about the hospital food in a good-natured sort of way, or they’ll watch an old movie or whatever’s on TV, and chat and laugh together, and it’s almost just like they’re at home on the couch, drinks in hand.

Of course, it isn’t always like that. There are bad days too, and as the end of 1980 approaches they get more and more frequent. In a way it’s nothing new, these ups and downs; Rick’s always had highs and lows, and Cliff long ago got used to adjusting himself around them. So when Rick is too exhausted or out of it or in pain to do much at all, Cliff spends many quiet hours, maybe talking a little but mostly just sitting, just watching him, just being there, which is something he’s always been good at.

* * *

“Mornin’ partner, how we doin’ today?” Cliff says, handing Rick that morning’s deli coffee ( _This hospital coffee’s shit_ had been Rick’s only complaint that first day, and Cliff had grinned and said, “Well, I can fix that.”).

Rick smiles and sits up, only wincing a little from the effort. “Not too bad, buddy. Not too bad at all. They upped my—my pain meds last night, so I’m feelin’ pretty good.”

Cliff grins at him, says, “That’s what I like to hear,” even as he thinks, _Upped his pain meds, that’s probably not good, that means they’re giving up, right?_

But, or maybe _because_ of that, he says, “Thought maybe we’d watch _Lear_ today. What do you think? You up for it?” He’s been saving it, knowing it’s Rick’s favorite of his career.

And Rick’s eyes light up. “Hell yeah. Sounds perfect.” So Cliff pops the tape in, and settles in for a long three hours.

Rick’s turn as Edgar in _King Lear,_ which Sam Wanamaker finally got off the ground in ’77, is a decidedly mixed bag. The costumes are a bizarre cross between medieval and Western (and God, the fights with wardrobe on that shoot, Rick pitching a fit every time they tried to get him in a tunic), and Rick stumbles around like an out-of-place gorilla, slipping in and out of an ill-advised British accent.

But Rick is immensely proud of the film, loves to brag that he did Shakespeare with the savior of the Globe Theatre himself. Cliff was never much for Shakespeare, but after running lines with Rick for hours and hours, he started to pick up some appreciation for the language, at least what he could understand of it.

Cliff remembers Sam going on about how _Lear_ is an old man’s play, how you can’t really understand it until you understand death. And now he knows what Sam meant: watching it again, here in the hospital, is a fucking revelation. He never saw this before, but amid all the ridiculous bullshit in the movie, there are moments where Rick somehow found some clarity, where the language sounds natural in his mouth. And everything else — the swordfights and the costumes and the bad accents — drops away, and it all comes down to Rick, speaking words that sound like the truth.

“And worse I may be yet: the worst is not, so long as we can say, _This is the worst,”_ Rick says as Edgar, and it feels like he’s speaking directly to them. Rick looks at him, eyes big and serious, and Cliff has no response. They watch quietly, letting the language sink in, not cracking jokes for once. Towards the end, Edgar tells his half-brother, “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us,” and the real Rick laughs and mutters, “No shit.” Cliff chuckles and squeezes his hand fondly.

Cliff remembers that Rick has the last lines of the movie, but he can’t remember quite what they are. So he’s not at all prepared for the final frames, when Edgar, the last one standing, looks at the destruction around him and says:

 _The weight of this sad time we must obey;  
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say._ _  
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young  
Shall never see so much, nor live so long._

Cliff mutes the TV once the credits start rolling, feeling like he’s been hit with a fucking brick. Rick’s voice is weak when he says, “I guess that Shakespeare knew his stuff, huh?” Cliff smiles and lays a hand on Rick’s shoulder, stroking absently with his thumb.

They fall into a heavy silence as Cliff wonders if Sam Wanamaker was some sort of prophet, to put those words in Rick’s mouth four years ago, well before all this started. There’s no other explanation for how he could have just sat here and watched Rick speak the fucking truth: _I know what you’ve done for me, Cliff. What you do. What you bear. What you put up with. What you carry. And you need to know, I’m never going to make it as far as you. There’s no way I’ll stick around as long as you want. And I hope you would have still done it all, knowing that._ Maybe that’s not what the lines said in so many words, but it’s what they _meant,_ Cliff knows, and it’s probably the closest he’ll ever get to saying that for real, knowing Rick.

Rick, who even now is glancing around awkwardly, looking like there’s something he wants to say and can’t. Cliff waits patiently. Finally he tries, “Cliff, I—everything you’ve done—I don’t know how I can thank you, I—”

Cliff shakes his head at that. “Buddy, if I was in it for the thanks, I’da been gone a long time ago.”

He means it fondly, but Rick gets that here-comes-the-waterworks look and goes, “Oh God, I’m sorry, I’m so—” and Cliff just can’t abide that right now, so he leans over and shuts him up the best way he knows how. 

Rick’s mouth tastes weird, dry from the cocktail of pills, and Cliff’s nose bumps against the thin plastic breathing tube. But that doesn’t matter, because Rick moans under his breath and relaxes into the kiss and he’s the same Rick he’s always known, pliant, eager, _his._

Eventually Rick breaks away, and Cliff straightens and looks down at him, hoping he hasn’t tired him out or something. But Rick looks at him steadily. His eyes are hooded and it’s not from the morphine. “C’mere,” he says.

And it’s not like Cliff is far away, but he stands and takes a step closer to the bed, so his legs are pressed right up against it. Rick reaches out a hand and lays it on Cliff’s stomach, starts pressing, massaging gently. Cliff lets out a breath and leans into the touch. He doesn’t quite know what’s happening, but he figures it out quick enough when Rick’s hand moves lower, slow and deliberate, and dips under his jeans, still massaging. Cliff can’t believe it but he’s getting hard, almost immediately — it’s been a while. 

“Rick, you don’t have to—” he starts, figuring it’s probably not good for Rick to exert himself too much.

But Rick shakes his head. “Shh, it’s okay, I want to.” And he smiles at him, a secret, wolfish smile, and that’s all Cliff needs to see.

Rick is struggling to undo Cliff’s jeans with one hand, so Cliff does it, tugging down his briefs just enough for his cock to come out. Rick wraps his hand around him and starts stroking, almost painfully slow. Cliff can’t help himself, he groans and his hips buck forward, wanting _more._

“Better hurry up,” Cliff gets out between sharp breaths, nodding toward the door.

So Rick speeds up, stroking harder now, looking up at him, biting his lip in concentration. Cliff reaches out and cups his hand around the back of Rick’s neck, fingers moving through his hair in time with Rick’s hand. They don’t break eye contact and it feels like much more than a simple handjob, significant somehow, weighty, and maybe that’s why Cliff is totally unraveled in no time at all, breathless, desperately trying to stop himself from crying out. Rick’s eyes are wide. “ _God,_ Cliff,” he breathes. “You look— _fuck_ —this all it takes to get you goin’?”

Cliff looks right at him. There are so many things he could say but he hasn’t got the breath, all he can manage is, “Yeah, just you, I— _fuck,_ Rick—’m _yours—”_

And that’s not news, but still Rick _gasps,_ looking amazed, and Cliff just barely has time to think that of _course_ he still would have done it all, knowing how it would turn out, of _course_ it’s all worth it, and then he’s right on the edge and —

— and it occurs to him that it would be awfully hard to explain the mess that’s about to happen to the nurses, so at the last moment he pulls Rick’s hand away, grabs a tissue from the bedside table, and finishes himself off, clutching Rick’s hand tight, gasping.

It’s not the last time he comes with Rick’s name on his lips, but it’s the last time Rick is there to hear it.

* * *

The final decline, when it happens, is blessedly quick. Ultimately it’s his liver that does it. This actually isn't because of his drinking; they discovered the cancer had spread there when he first went in the hospital, there just hadn’t been any symptoms until now. But still, Cliff can’t help but see it as ironic, like the organ is rebelling against the decades of abuse Rick’s subjected it to, the booze having its say even though it’s the cigarettes that are really doing him in.

The first sign that things are shutting down is the jaundice, Rick’s skin and the whites of his eyes taking on an unnatural yellowish tinge. Then one day Cliff shows up to find him writhing around, rubbing against the sheets, saying it itches everywhere. At first he thinks Rick has finally lost his goddamn mind, hallucinations or something. But it turns out that’s another symptom, from some shit in his skin that his liver’s supposed to be filtering out. And that means a new medication to stop the itching, which means more nausea, more fatigue, more days when all Rick wants to do is sleep.

He starts refusing food, too, saying he’s not hungry or his stomach hurts or he just doesn’t want it. Cliff half-heartedly encourages him to eat, but Rick fixes him with a look and says quietly, “Cliff. Stop it. It’s time.” And he says it with such calm, such certainty, that Cliff can’t argue.

The last person Rick allows to visit is Sharon, maybe a week before the end, and for once Cliff doesn’t make himself scarce. Rick smiles weakly when he sees her but doesn’t have much to say. She does her best to be upbeat but it’s obvious she’s disturbed, and it occurs to him how Rick must look to someone who hasn’t watched the changes day by day: fucking awful. Jaundiced, gaunt, weight and muscle dropping off him. Like death warmed over.

When Cliff decides the three of them have sat there awkwardly for long enough, he says to Rick, “You getting tired, buddy?” and Sharon takes the hint. Cliff walks her down to the lobby in silence. Before she leaves, she turns to him, tears in her eyes, and then suddenly embraces him.

“Oh, Cliff, _honey._ I’m so sorry,” she says softly, hugging him tight. Cliff stiffens for a moment, wanting to stay distant, but — it’s _Sharon._ It’s Sharon, and so it feels alright to collapse against her, dropping his head onto her shoulder, letting her hold him, letting some of her warmth seep into him.

(Among the four of them — him and Rick, Sharon and Jay — there’s never been any explicit acknowledgement of what he and Rick are. But it’s long been obvious that Sharon and Jay are aware, and now, from the way Sharon looks at him, the way she holds him, Cliff is certain she understands. Because she doesn’t treat him like a man who’s about to lose his boss of twenty years or his best friend or his brother. She treats him like a man who’s about to lose the love of his life.) 

* * *

The last time he sees Rick alive, he’s barely lucid. This confusion — another effect of the liver failure — started with him forgetting things they had just talked about the day before, and quickly deepened. These last couple days he’s been slipping in and out of consciousness, muttering to himself, seeming to hardly know where he is.

Cliff’s familiar enough with death to know when it’s approaching, so he doesn’t go home, sitting there with Rick late into the night. Rick doesn’t sleep; he’s agitated, shifting around weakly on the bed, staring at nothing with unfocused eyes.

“Cliff?….Cliff?” he says, sounding very far away.

“Yeah, I’m here.” Cliff places his hand on Rick’s. His skin feels cool and clammy.

He’s not sure if Rick even hears him, but he calms at the touch. Cliff stands there for a while, listening to Rick’s breath rattling in his throat. It’s a sound he recognizes from battlefields and field hospitals. 

Finally, Rick murmurs, “I guess we had a good run, huh?”

Cliff smiles, squeezes his hand. “We sure did, partner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes:
> 
> 1\. Re: “the savior of the Globe Theatre himself”, in 1970 Sam Wanamaker became obsessed with building a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe at its original site; he got the project started and spent his later years raising funds for it. 
> 
> 2\. So in the deleted scene, Wanamaker goes on about how Rick would make a fantastic Edgar, whom he describes as the bastard son. But in fact EDMUND is the bastard son, and is the part Rick obviously should play; Rick as Edgar would just be weird. But by the time I realized that, I’d already written a bunch of stuff that depended on Rick having Edgar’s lines, so…sorry it doesn’t make sense, blame the guy who plays Wanamaker I guess.


	4. Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh God I'm so sorry this took so long, I fell way behind until the semester ended, thank you all for your patience. 
> 
> Important: there is a SPOILERY content warning; please go down to the end notes to see it.

The funeral is packed — nothing brings people out of the woodwork like a Hollywood funeral. No better place to see and be seen.

Cliff doesn’t mind. Makes it easier for him to hide out at the back, sunglasses firmly in place.

Sharon gives the eulogy, pretty even as she cries. “Rick Dalton was a true movie star,” she begins, and goes on to praise his charm, his humor, his loyalty. It’s not entirely accurate, but so what? Rick would be thrilled, to be presented to the world as he wanted to be, if not as he actually was.

He figures Sharon knows it, too. Good egg, that Sharon.

After the service, when the remains of Rick are fully six feet under, Cliff stands around wondering what the hell he’s supposed to do now. People are getting into cars and limos, back to their normal lives, gossiping about the crowd, the eulogy, Rick.

No one meets his eyes, and Cliff figures there are three reasons for that: they don’t care about some anonymous old guy in sunglasses and black jeans; or they recognize him as Rick’s old stunt double, the infamous Cliff Booth, and want nothing to do with him; or they know _exactly_ who he is and don’t know what you’re supposed to say to the deceased’s best friend who he was also fucking.

Which, hell, Cliff doesn’t know either, so he can’t really fault them for it.

Sharon appears suddenly at his elbow, shy little Maggie half-hiding behind her. She speaks discreetly. “Cliff, will you come back to our place for a drink? Please?” He declines at first, just out of habit, but is relieved when she insists.

(After the split with Roman — he was sleeping with his script girl, and while directing Sharon in _Tess,_ the bastard — Sharon had decamped for a real mansion in Bel Air, Jay of course following along. It’s only a ten-minute drive from Cielo — hell, five, the way Cliff does it — so he and Rick had remained fixtures there, almost as much as when they were neighbors.)

At the house, Cliff silently watches Sharon and Jay hand their daughter off to the nanny and tell Paul he can go play his video games. Then they get down to the business of honoring Rick in the only way possible: by getting deeply, passionately drunk.

It’s a quiet sort of drunk, though, the three of them more given to reminiscing than carrying on. They gather in the living room — well, one of the living rooms — and Cliff and Jay let Sharon do most of the talking. She has a way of making everything sound that little bit nicer, softer, just enough to be comforting. Cliff jumps in occasionally (“Nah, nah, that was in ’75, I remember ‘cause he had that stupid mustache. God, I hated that thing.”), but mostly he stays quiet, sinking into the warm embrace of the alcohol, letting Sharon’s version of Rick wash over him. Eventually the sounds of Paul’s Atari stop echoing down the hall, but the three of them keep going, one story leading into another, one round of drinks flowing into the next. 

At some point Jay rolls a joint and they pass it around, like teenagers squatting in an alley. Sharon always gets affectionate when she’s high, her actress’s poise dissolving, and now she stretches out with her head in Jay’s lap, holding on to his hand, their wedding rings pressed together. Jay smiles and runs his other hand through her hair, then leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead. Cliff holds the joint and wonders if he ever looked at Rick that way, the way Jay always looks at Sharon, like he can’t possibly hold back his affection.

He closes his eyes, brings the joint to his lips and inhales, thinking maybe the smoke will make his heart stop clenching up like that.

Much later, so late it’s almost morning, Cliff finds himself sitting on the floor leaning against a fancy cream sofa. There’s a glass of bourbon in his hand, though he’s not drinking it so much as hanging on to it for dear life. Sharon’s dozed off on a chaise, and Jay comes over and sits next to him. For a while they’re quiet, just breathing together. Then Jay says, “Cliff. We’ve got an extra room. You should stay here, at least for a little while. Hell, for as long as you want. Plenty of space. We can always use a hand around the house.”

Cliff appreciates that last part, Jay pretending he’d be useful, pretending the offer isn’t charity. (In certain ways, he thinks, Jay gets him better than anyone. After all, they both know what it is to devote your whole self to another person, to wait and wait and finally get what you need.)

He considers Jay’s offer. He looks around and imagines being cooped up in this huge house, all plush carpets and mahogany. He thinks he’d go fucking crazy.

Through the picture window, he can see the faintest hint of dawn fading in over the Hollywood hills.

Hell, he might go fucking crazy no matter what. But he knows where he’d rather do it.

Cliff looks at Jay, who’s been waiting patiently for an answer. “I appreciate it,” he says. “I do. But I can’t.”

Jay nods slowly, not surprised. “Alright. I get that.” He looks uncomfortable for a moment, picking at the carpet. Then he looks at Cliff with big, open eyes. “But—what the hell are you gonna do?” Cliff understands what he’s really asking: _What the hell would_ I _do, if it were me left behind?_

Cliff shrugs, swirls the liquor in his glass, takes a sip. It’s warm as it travels down his throat. “Only thing there is to do. Keep moving.”

* * *

Packing the last twenty years of his life into the car is no trouble at all. Clothes in a couple of duffel bags, some tools liberated from the shed, the bag of cash in a lockbox chained to the inside of the trunk. He’s already sold his bike and his weight bench, but tosses a few smaller dumbbells in the trunk. And as for non-essentials, things he might want to keep just because? It turns out there’s not too much of that either:

His purple heart and his distinguished service cross, his Stuntmen’s Association belt buckle. Tickets from various premiers. Brandy’s collar.

A single picture of him and Billie, from the real early days, some party, both of them sloppy drunk. She’s laughing into his shoulder, and he’s got an arm wrapped around her, grinning wide, looking thrilled to have caught such a prize. (He hasn’t kept any pictures from the wedding. He didn’t have a tux and she didn’t have a gown, and that easy closeness between them was already gone. Nothing worth saving there.)

And he takes all the pictures of him and Rick. There aren’t too many: some from various sets over the years, in their matching costumes. They’re never truly captured in those, always keeping it professional for some behind-the-scenes photographer. But there’s one from a party at Sharon’s that’s different. They’re side by side, could almost be just a couple of buddies hanging out by the pool with beers in hand. But things were always more relaxed at Sharon’s and that day they must have let their guard down, because the way Cliff’s hand is just visible around Rick’s waist, the way Rick leans into Cliff’s side like he belongs there, the way they both look so damn comfortable, is undeniable. Sharon had slipped them the photo with a knowing smile.

All that fits in a small box. He already sorted through the rest of the house during the long nights while Rick was in the hospital, choosing to leave most of it, the posters and caricatures and figurines. He wonders if Cousin Betty will find it unsettling to step into this shrine to the career of Rick Dalton.

He sure finds it unsettling, being surrounded by countless Ricks: cartoon Rick, ceramic Rick, young Rick in a cowboy hat, old Rick in Shakespeare garb, all of them following him with their eyes as he gets ready to leave them.

He absently picks up a souvenir _Bounty Law_ mug, gazes at the drawing of Rick on a horse, scowling and brandishing a pistol. He keeps looking at it, his eyes glued to it, and time stretches out, and the mug feels heavy in his hand but he can’t put it down. Rick is staring right back at him, and it’s impossibly heavy, like it’s pinning him down, like he can’t get away—

There’s a crash and pieces of Rick’s face rain down on the floor, and it’s only then Cliff realizes that he’s flung the mug at the wall. For a brief, unhinged moment, he wonders how he’ll explain it being shattered to Rick. Then he laughs at himself, gets a broom, and cleans it up silently. 

In truth, without the inescapable gravity of Rick, there’s nothing keeping him here, nothing at all.

* * *

After leaving the house keys with Rick’s lawyer, Cliff makes one last stop, to drop off the only item that couldn’t be left at the house, sold, or brought with him: the goddamn flamethrower.

Cliff’s not much for goodbyes, so he parks at the bottom of Sharon and Jay’s driveway and walks up, coming around the back of the house. He deposits it on the back porch (making sure the case is locked — he doesn’t want to be responsible for Paul getting ahold of the thing accidentally) with a note that, he hopes, says all that needs to be said:

_Sharon, Jay-_

_Figured it was a bad idea to leave this for Betty from Missouri, and I didn’t know what else to do with it. Seems right for you to have it, seeing as I guess it’s what brought us together. Hope you never need to use it._

_Thank you for everything._

_-CB_

_PS: I’ll be sure to see all Sharon’s movies, so make sure they’re good._

* * *

Cliff considers doing a sort of grand tour on his way out of LA, driving past all the old landmarks one last time. But that would be dangerously close to wallowing, so all he does is drive slow for once, taking a direct route east but enjoying the neon and glamour he passes along the way. When he reaches the city limits, he speeds up and doesn’t look back.

He has no particular destination, so he just keeps turning away from traffic. When he reaches an empty stretch of highway, he lets go and just _drives,_ the way he always wants to, the way he’s been driving since he was barely more than a kid, running moonshine through Tennessee back roads. It’s second nature at this point, to treat the car almost like a living thing, to feel the engine whine when he pushes it, then respond joyfully when he gives it the next gear, to ease his foot on and off the gas, keeping a light hand on the wheel, never forcing it, giving the car just enough information to do what it needs. Rick was a terrible driver, back when he drove, and maybe this is why: he always tried too damn hard, wanting total control over the car, never understanding that just like with horses, you need to trust the car and trust yourself.

Which Cliff always has, and that’s why the open road is just like home to him.

He blasts the radio and doesn’t think about a goddamn thing except how fast he can go, how smooth he can take the turns, and for a while, he feels free.

* * *

By Cliff’s calculations, the cash from Rick could last him a good ten years, if he’s smart about it. He doubts he’ll be around that long, but he lives cheaply anyway, because it’s no trouble to do so.

He could go anywhere — back to Tennessee is his first thought, but there’s not much left for him there, his folks all long dead or rotting in jail. Or, he’s never spent much time up in the northeast, thinks about heading straight across the country to Maine. But it’s still winter, awful cold in Maine, and he’s always been drawn to deserts, the emptiness, the quiet — not to mention the lack of cops — so he takes to tooling around the southwest. He quickly settles into a routine of sorts: driving most of the day, wherever the road takes him. Stopping in at roadside bars for a drink and a little conversation. Lunches of canned food or cold cuts he keeps in a little cooler in the back, dinners at a greasy diner. He shells out for a motel every couple days, mostly for the shower, but otherwise he pulls off the road to a suitably deserted area and stretches out in the backseat or, even better, out under the stars. 

It’s amazing, how little you really need to get by.

In a way, he’s back on familiar ground. He’s spent years of his life like this, back when he was a kid looking to take on the world, and again when he was just out of the army and just trying to get _away_ : driving around, never staying in one place long enough to get that itchy, restless feeling, supposedly looking for work but mostly looking for trouble.

Now, he’s not looking for much of anything. He’s not twenty anymore, or even forty, and he doesn’t feel like he is, either. At least not physically, that’s for sure — he feels every one of his sixty-seven years. Suddenly all his old injuries are coming back, scars he’s long ignored joining the constant dull ache in his hip in a symphony of low-level pain. He wakes up to the veins around the old bullet wound in his stomach pulsing, a steady beat of _hurt, hurt, hurt._ He moves his shoulder the wrong way, stretching to grab something from the backseat, and it aches the rest of the day, as if to say, _Hey buddy, remember that time you almost lost your arm? Thought you could just forget about that, huh? Well, you can’t._

And it’s true, he can’t forget about any of it, not the old injuries, and not the dreams, which are coming back too. These godforsaken dreams had tapered off after the war, and apart from a brief reappearance right after the break-in, he’d figured they were long gone. But no, he’s now treated to visits from Rick a couple nights a week, and not the sort of visits he’d like either.

Sometimes they’re on set and Rick, trying to do his own stunt for some reason, takes a bad fall off a balcony or a real punch to the head. Sometimes Cliff is in the hospital, watching Rick toss and turn and plead with him for morphine. Sometimes it’s that night twelve years ago but the hippies somehow get past him and he’s stuck in the living room as they head straight for Rick, who floats unsuspecting in his pool. Sometimes he’s back in the war, feeling a bullet whizz past him and turning to see it strike his buddy behind him, and when his buddy collapses and Cliff lifts the helmet, it’s Rick’s bright blue eyes staring back at him.

But each time, it ends the same way: with Rick screaming, _Cliff, it hurts, please Cliff, help me,_ and Cliff waking up gasping, sweaty, disoriented, looking around frantically for enemies that aren’t there.

Then he lights a cigarette with shaky hands and waits for his breath to slow down, cursing. He thought he was done with this shit, but it turns out it’s just one more thing he can’t leave behind.

* * *

At some point over the years, Cliff picked up a vague notion that Santa Fe has good scenery and is interesting, some sort of oasis of the desert southwest, so he heads that way. The scenery turns out to be nice, red rock mountains and pine trees as far as the eye can see, but other than that it’s just depressing, Indians peddling teal crap for tourists while the last of the hippies wander the streets. He sticks around long enough to score some weed, from a strung-out acid freak muttering about how the CIA killed Lennon, then high-tails it out of there.

He needs a damn drink after that scene, so he pulls into a lonely roadside bar a ways out of town, tires kicking up dust in the expanse of dirt that serves as a parking lot. Judging by the pickup trucks and patriotic bumper stickers, he figures this place should be free of hippie burnouts.

When he gets out of the car, there’s a dog there, watching as if he’s been expecting him. This is not unusual — there are plenty of strays around these parts, and Cliff normally pays them no mind. After Brandy, he had a sense that the major relationships of his life had come and gone, so he figured he'd never have another dog.

“What do you want, boy? I got nothin’ for ya,” he says, but the dog just trots over and stands in front of him, waiting. For what, Cliff doesn’t know, but he pauses and takes a good look at him. He’s a mottled black and brown, except for where he’s going grey around the muzzle; too narrowly built to be all pit, but close enough to pique Cliff’s interest. He doesn’t look like a real stray — he’s skinny but not starving, and he’s looking at Cliff not with fear or hunger but in a familiar sort of way, with friendly, intelligent eyes.

Wondering if he’s trained, Cliff looks him in the eye and firmly says, “Sit.” The dog sits immediately and looks up at him happily, awaiting his praise. Cliff smiles. “Alright, good. Speak.” A single yip.

“Down.” He lies down in front of Cliff’s car. “Good boy. Alright, let’s see if you’ll stick around. _Stay,”_ he says, and heads inside. 

He purposely lingers in the bar for a while, nursing his whiskey, wanting to get a read on the dog’s patience. The place is full of grizzled old men chatting about guns and cars. He could fit right in here, he realizes — or at least pretend to, as long as he didn’t order a bloody mary or talk about the decade he spent fucking a TV cowboy.

But he knows if he stuck around too long that restless feeling would come back, the one that only Rick could ever keep at bay, so he gets the bartender’s attention and pays. “Say, that dog out there belong to anybody?”

“Nah,” the bartender says, handing him his change. “He showed up a couple days ago. I guess he’s been eatin’ scraps outta the garbage. Seems friendly enough, but I don’t think anyone around here’d miss him. Why, you lookin' for a dog?”

Cliff grins. “I wasn’t,” he says on his way out the door. “But I might’ve found one anyway.”

Sure enough, the dog is still sitting by his car, waiting obediently. When he sees Cliff his tail starts wagging but he stays down. Cliff crouches next to him and holds out his hand for the dog to sniff. “Look at you, you’re a good boy, aren’t you?” he says, and scratches him under the chin. The dog closes his eyes and nuzzles against Cliff’s hand, and something inside him sparks to life, something he hadn’t even realized was dormant.

“What do you think, boy? You want to partner up with another old dog?” The dog barks once in response, and Cliff could swear it sounds like _yes._

He grabs the side of the car and stands slowly, not minding the complaint from his hip. When he opens the back door, the dog hops in immediately and makes himself comfortable. Cliff grins. “Well alright,” he drawls.

Maybe he’s turning into a sentimental old fart, but he can’t resist naming him Jake.

This is the first time he’s had a dog he didn’t raise himself. It’s different — he only trains Jake a little, just to get him comfortable with his commands, and it’s too late to train him to attack, but that’s alright. He never puts Jake on a leash, and is just as likely to feed him scraps from his own meals as spend money on dog food. On the whole, he feels more like Jake’s buddy or companion than his master, but even that is nice, just having another body in the car on the long drives.

When he goes into a store or bar, he just leaves Jake outside, not bothering to tie him up. The way he sees it, this dog came into his life of his own accord, and if he sees fit to leave, that’s his right. Jake never does, though, always waiting faithfully for Cliff until he comes back, always happy to see him. 

* * *

Cliff may be getting old, but he’s still a man and still has needs, and his hand and his memories can only get him so far, so soon enough it’s back to the bar alleys and public bathrooms and motels that lonely men resort to for casual sex. He’d be willing to pay cash, but finds that charm and smiles and compliments are enough. Even now, his eyes are as blue as they ever were, his jaw as square — plenty of folks see the appeal.

He hears you have to be careful picking up guys these days, so he tries to stick to women, but now and then there’s some bright blue eyes and soft brown hair and a winning smile that he just can’t pass up. He does always use a rubber, and anyway, he figures he’ll be dead long before whatever this new thing is can get him.

The first time he gives in to this particular temptation — the first time since before Rick, anyway — it’s in a bar on the outskirts of Albuquerque, with a denim-clad guy who smirks at him over his whiskey with laughing eyes. He pushes the guy up against the wall of a bathroom stall and tries to ignore the godawful New Wave leaking in from the tinny speakers outside. It’s weird, being with a man who’s not Rick, all awkward angles and touches that don’t get the response he’s expecting, and maybe that’s why getting a condom on is much harder than he remembers it being a decade ago. He fumbles with it, fingers feeling thick and clumsy, until the guy gives a snort of impatience. Cliff looks up sheepishly. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s been a while.”

The guy raises an eyebrow and looks him up and down. “It’s been a while for _you?_ Really? What, were you a priest or somethin’?”

Cliff laughs. “Or somethin’.”

* * *

True to his word, Cliff sees _The Postman Always Rings Twice_ on opening weekend. It’s a bit against type for Sharon, the murderous femme fatale role, but she is electric nonetheless, pushing forty but still lighting up the screen like a woman ten years younger. Or maybe Cliff’s just biased, because he finds himself hanging on her every word, the rest of the movie disappearing around her, as if he’s just sitting there having a conversation with an old friend.

He saw the original version when it came out (it was just after the war, and he saw nearly everything in theaters in those days, any excuse to spend a few hours outside of his own head), so he’s anticipating the ending: Sharon will die and Nicholson will be tried and convicted and go to jail for murdering her, though he didn’t really, at least not on purpose. But that’s not what happens in this version. Sharon is thrown from the car while Nicholson's driving, sure enough, and Cliff sits there waiting for the film to continue with him being arrested and all the rest, but instead it ends right there: a lingering shot of Nicholson weeping over Sharon’s body, and a close-up of her bloody hand.

The credits roll and it’s _Lear_ all over again: Cliff feels like either he’s going fucking crazy or that ending was created just to speak to him. A drifter alone on the road, screaming for someone he loved. Maybe guilty, maybe not. No punishment, no closure.

Toward the end of the credits, Jay’s name catches his eye. It pulls him out for a moment, long enough to think that he’s pretty sure Nicholson didn’t really need a personal hairdresser on set, but there’s nothing wrong with a little nepotism. He imagines Jay hanging around the set, watching Sharon work, and Sharon looking over at him after each shot, happy to see him, checking for his approval, just like Rick would do. He sees them shooting the final frames, Sharon dead on the side of the road, and after the _Cut!_ she sits up, pretty and happy and perfectly alive, and then something shifts and she’s still blonde and beautiful but her eyes are different, mean, accusing, and her skin is blue and he can barely hear her voice over the crashing waves but there’s acid in it when she says, _You did this._ And then there’s another shift and the face is Rick’s but the voice is the same, _you did this, you did this…_

The lights slam on and Cliff blinks, shakes his head, pulled out of the daydream or waking nightmare or whatever it was. The theater is empty except for a pimply teenager who glances at him as he starts sweeping up popcorn.

Cliff pushes himself to his feet and makes his way out of the theater shakily. Jake is waiting for him outside, as always, curled up in the shade under the marquee. At the first bench they pass, Cliff sits and lets Jake prop himself up in his lap and lick his face as Cliff scratches him behind the ears, until Nicholson’s screams fade away and he feels fully back in the world.

Even so, he spends the rest of the day with disturbing visions swimming in his head, Rick’s face fading into Billie’s, both of them looking at him with accusing eyes.

It’s in an attempt to nip that shit in the bud that he goes out and gets himself beat up that night. The people out here are harder, meaner; it only takes a couple tries to find some meathead who’s got fists and is willing to use them when provoked. (It occurs to him that the only difference between finding a guy to fuck and a guy to fight is in picking the right kind of bar.) They fight out back, the dirt lot behind the bar empty except for the muffled sounds of jukebox music and raucous conversation from inside. Cliff gets in a few punches just for fun, and protects himself enough to prevent any real damage, but other than that he holds back and just takes what the guy dishes out, relishing each hit. _I’m letting him do this to me for you, alright?_ he tells Billie and Rick in his head. _Now leave me the hell alone._

Eventually the guy gets frustrated and steps away, looking at him with suspicion. “What’s wrong with you, old man?” he says. “You don’t know how to fight?”

Cliff just laughs until the guy shakes his head in disgust, shoves him to the ground and leaves. Cliff spits out blood and watches it sink into the dirt.

That night, he sleeps free of dreams.

* * *

The other way to sleep soundly is to not go to bed alone, so when the waitress — Liz, according to her name tag, pretty despite looking like she’s been around the block a few times — calls him _sugar_ and throws him smiles and chats with him over his coffee, how could he not take the opportunity?

“You working the rest of the night?” he asks as he pays.

“I get off at eight.” She winks at him, and he grins slowly. 

“I’ll bet you do.”

He swings by a liquor store for a sixpack and is back at eight.

With her teased bleach-blonde hair and red lipstick, Liz is a little garish for the dingy motel, but she’s sweet, and damn good in the sack. When they’re done, she sits up against the headboard and laughs freely. “Well! Damned if that’s not the best lay I’ve had since my husband!”

“Husband?” Cliff says, looking up from where he’s tracing a finger along the curves of her hip.

“Don’t worry, honey. I left that bastard four years ago. Best decision I ever made.”

He laughs. “Sounds about right.”

Liz reaches for her purse on the floor and sits back up with her cigarettes. She’s quiet as she lights one, then asks, “You ever been married?”

Cliff thinks about it. He can say what’s accurate, or he can say what’s true. He decides on the latter.

“Sure, twice.”

Liz looks at him, eyebrow raised. “Hmm.” She offers the pack, but they’re goddamned menthols so he waves them away. “Decided to go back for more, huh? Not me. I won’t be settling down again, that’s for sure.”

Cliff laughs. “Well, it’s true the first wasn’t much of a recommendation for marriage. But the second…the second was worth it.” 

“So what happened?”

He stretches to grab his own cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans on the floor, not embarrassed to let out a little grunt of pain as he rolls back over his hip. “Cancer. Few months ago,” he says, looking at the ceiling. 

There’s a moment while that information lands, then Liz speaks softly, her bravado gone. “Aw, I’m sorry, hun. How long were you together?”

“Twenty years, just about.” He lights a smoke and takes a long, deep drag, luxuriating in it. Her hand tangles in his hair, caressing a little, and it’s nice, comforting. He looks up at her, admiring her pale breasts, stretch marks and all. Her expression is soft, and he’s suddenly filled with tenderness towards her.

On a stupid impulse, he says, “What would you say if I was thinking about sticking around here for a while?”

She gives him a sad smile and lies down next to him, draping an arm over his chest. “I’d say I meant it about not settling down again.”

And just like that, the impulse is gone, vanished in a puff of embarrassment. What the hell has he become, inviting pity from one night stands? He laughs and stubs out his cigarette. “Fair enough. I never had much luck with blondes anyway.”

She kisses him on the cheek and falls asleep with her head on his chest, and that at least is something.

* * *

So he keeps moving. It occurs to him he’s never seen the Grand Canyon, and that seems as good a destination as any, so he aims the car west across New Mexico and into Arizona, taking the isolated northern route rather than Route 66 with its state troopers. It’s true Indian country, vast empty stretches of red-rock desert broken only by the occasional pueblo, places with names like Rattlesnake and Mexican Water.

With the desert and cactuses and dusty little not-even-towns, he starts to feel like a real cowboy, like he’s gonna turn a corner and find some gunslinger waiting to finish him off. He might be getting paranoid, but he finds that his gun feels too far away in the glove compartment and he starts wearing it on his hip, at least when he’s alone. Which is most of the time.

He’s never minded that, being alone, and at least he’s got Jake. But still, there are nights when it gets to him, being totally surrounded by emptiness. Those nights, he takes out his little box of memorabilia and looks at the good photo of him and Rick. He doesn’t remember the day it was taken, but he can imagine it was one of those casual get-togethers Sharon & Jay often hosted, nothing high-stakes, just their close friends. He can imagine he might have manned the grill for a while, until Rick would have come over with fresh beers and dragged him away to sit by the pool, and Cliff would have let him because he never could resist Rick in a good mood. They would have sat there, dipping their feet in the water, watching the kids splash each other, and at some point Cliff would have threatened to push Rick in because for some reason he loved pools but hated actual swimming, and Rick would have scooted closer and whispered in his ear, _You even try it, buddy, and no s—sex for a week, I mean it._ And then Rick would have stayed there, right next to him, so when Jay came around they would have nestled against each other and smiled for the camera without a second thought. And when they went home later, both happily buzzed, Cliff would have pushed Rick up against the wall the second the door was closed and said, _Alright, I didn’t push you in, what’s my reward?_ And Rick would have looked at him with hooded eyes and…

And sometimes he lets that train of thought continue, but sometimes it gets to be too—too _much._ So he puts the photo away and thinks of other things, things where the bitterness of losing them is outweighed by the sweetness of having had them at all. Jay, sitting with him on the floor in companionable silence, knowing his offer would be refused but making it anyway. Sharon in the hospital lobby, seeing what was happening, what he needed, and giving it to him without a second thought. He doesn’t know what he ever did to deserve friendship like that, but it must have been something good.

* * *

Maybe he’s distracted, singing along with Bob Seger on the oldies station. Maybe his reflexes aren’t what they once were, and still driving the way he does is just asking for trouble.

Or maybe it’s just his time.

The moment Cliff sees the deer leap out in front of his car, he jerks the wheel to the left, slams the brakes—no big deal, he did this practically once a week when he was stunting. But this time it’s too late, too fast, and the car spins out across the road, tires screaming, Jake barking from the backseat.

A steep dropoff on the side of the road, a convertible with the roof down, and a driver who wouldn’t be caught dead with a seatbelt on are not a good combination. As the car tumbles down the ridge and Cliff is flung from it, he thinks, _Well,_ _I fucked that one up._

Then comes the impact, and he doesn’t think anything for a while.

When he comes to, it’s to a warm, rough tongue on his face, and his first thought is _Brandy_ before he realizes it’s Jake trying to wake him up. He wishes he hadn’t, because he’s immediately hit by a wall of pain, overwhelming, suffocating, and his vision blurs and blacks out for a moment. When it comes back his head is swimming, but he can just barely raise it enough to see that the car flipped upside down and landed clean on top of him, his whole left side crushed beneath it. He tries to breath but his body just pushes against metal and hurts even worse, and there’s a bloom of red spreading rapidly across his shirt. Even with his thoughts slow and bleary from the pain, he knows there’s no saving him now.

And he finds that he’s not upset about it. He’s never believed in fate or any of that shit, but still, he has to appreciate the symmetry: Rick smoking himself to his grave, Cliff driving himself to his. Our pleasant vices, indeed.

Jake is still there, looking at him quizzically. He seems to be a little scratched up but basically unharmed, and that might be a miracle. For a second he imagines Jake as Lassie, running off for help. _What’s that, boy? There’s an old cowboy out in the middle of nowhere, dying on account of his own foolishness? Eh, doesn’t sound worth helping to me._ He laughs at the thought, but that hurts too, so he stops.

That aside, he figures it’s better for Jake not to witness him dying, so he waves a hand at him ineffectively to shoo him off. “Go away, Jakey,” he tries, voice weak. “Find someone else. You’ll be okay. Go on, boy. _Git.”_ But Jake just looks at him, head tilted. So, gritting his teeth through the pain, he lifts his hip just enough to get his gun out. He fires it in the opposite direction from Jake, and thankfully the shot is enough to scare the dog, who yelps and runs off. Cliff watches him go out of the corner of his eye, the only one who ever attached himself to Cliff and got out of it alive.

Now there’s no one around, just him and his ghosts and his blood, draining into the ground.

He closes his eyes against the hot sun and thinks of it. German blood, the only color in that grey world, everywhere, mixing with his friends’ blood in the dirt. Blood splattered against salty spray on a deck, not wept over. Hippie blood, bright on Rick’s white carpet and Cliff’s white jeans. Brandy’s blood, just a little from a clean shot, smeared on his hands. Rick’s blood, a warning against a white tissue.

No, more important: Rick’s blood, giving him life, flowing through his veins, the beat of his pulse under Cliff’s mouth, the pounding of his heart against Cliff’s.

All of them gone now, and him going the same way.

He takes shallow breaths, but still each one is fucking torture. Even after a lifetime of injuries, plenty that could have killed him, this is like another planet. He considers the gun in his hand. He can let it happen naturally, knowing it will be slow and agonizing. Or he can make it quick and painless.

He’s never been one to shy away from pain, but that was because he knew he’d come out the other side. Now, there is no other side. He’s reached the end of the trail.

He opens his eyes and the sky stares back, a stunning bright blue. And it’s all so simple, really.

He raises the gun to the right spot. 

Easiest thing in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERY (death-related) CW:  
> .  
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> .  
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> A character ends their own life, though I would classify it as closer to euthanasia than suicide. 
> 
> \---
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking with me on this sad adventure! This is the first multichapter fic I've done and it's been fun. If you enjoyed, kudos and comments truly make my day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I really just want to scream about these two with people, so comments are very appreciated if you can!


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